The Haines Borough is challenging the U.S. Census Bureau’s official count of its population, saying the agency undercounted the town’s residents by almost 20%. The lower population number threatens millions of dollars of federal funding over the next decade.
The 2020 census reported Haines’ population at 2,080, down from 2,508 in the 2010 count.
“If we had lost almost 500 people, you would feel it in our town,” said Borough Clerk Alekka Fullerton. “You would see it in empty houses, in schools and in voter rolls.”
Census counts happen every 10 years and help determine congressional and legislative district maps and how nearly $3 trillion of federal money is distributed around the country.
There’s no exact formula for how much an undercount of Haines’ population might cost the borough, but the Alaska Department of Labor estimated in 2018 that each person not counted is worth $30,000 in federal money over 10 years. That could mean the borough would lose up to $15 million in potential funding over a decade.
The U.S. Census Bureau has a resolution procedure for states and municipalities to seek a review of the numbers. The rules do not allow for a full recount or changing the official number, but if the bureau finds errors it would issue a notice with updated numbers for federal funding calculations and as the basis for later population estimates.
“(The borough) must provide documentation … indicating that the Census Bureau missed housing, not simply missed population” in the count, according to the dispute resolution rules.
Fullerton said she and Andrew Conrad, the borough’s new planner, went through each housing unit in borough records unit by unit to understand where people might be living and how they might have been undercounted.
“We found several large inconsistencies,” said Fullerton, “There were places where there was a group of mailboxes with the same address and the Census Bureau counted it as one.”
David Howell, a state demographer, said Haines “absolutely” had a strong case for its appeal. “It seemed like a pretty systematic undercount of the Mosquito Lake area. There were a lot of housing units that unexplainably disappeared,” said Howell.
The Department of Labor’s July 2022 estimate for Haines is 2,575 residents, almost 500 more than the Census Bureau number.
While the borough suspected an error for months, it didn’t submit its official challenge until June 29, the day before the deadline. Fullerton described it as the culmination of “hours and hours and hours” of work.
Challenges aren’t a guarantee that results will be changed. “They don’t like to change,” said Howell, but “We are pretty certain there was an undercount in Haines.”
Nils Andreassen, director of the Alaska Municipal League, said several communities reached out to his group, though Haines is the only one to submit a challenge.
“I imagine it would be more widespread if everybody had time to pay attention to it, but it’s not an easy process,” he said.
Wrangell also “lost” residents, according to the 2020 census count, which was released in 2021, dropping from 2,369 in 2010 to 2,127. Though unlike Haines, where the state estimates a population gain, the Department of Labor agrees that Wrangell has lost population, estimated at 2,084 in July 2022. The department bases its numbers on Permanent Fund dividend applications, Howell said.
Though Wrangell officials have said they don’t believe the census numbers are accurate, they did not proceed with a formal appeal, calling it a “long, drawn-out and expensive” process. Borough Manager Jeff Good said July 5 he might “reach out to Haines to see what data they are using in the appeal.”
Haines officials did not have a timeline for when their challenge might be resolved.
Part of the reason for Wrangell’s reported population drop may be the low self-response rate to census questionnaires in 2020 among residents by phone, online or mail — just 42%. The statewide average in Alaska was 55%, while the rate in Petersburg, Sitka, Ketchikan and Juneau ranged from 55% to 70%.
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